FBC Adult Bible Study

Faith Baptist Church

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04:31

Well, it's good to be back with you today, we're glad to be here. The Lord saw that we woke up quite early this morning, my wife was already up and I was not up yet, when all of a sudden, one of the loudest, biggest claps of thunder

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I ever heard, boom, and I jumped.

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I was in bed and I jumped a little bit, it was loud, there was a flash and then all of a sudden, the clap of thunder and it was like it was right over our house, woke us both up, made us awake here this morning.

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Our journey up here this morning started out a little bit wet, but dried out along the way, and it was very, again, a very pleasant journey for us up here this morning.

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Some time ago, at the German Island Hills Baptist Church in Metamora, where we are members,

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I taught a series of lessons on a particular topic, there are three particular things that I like to study concerning God, and number one would be

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His works, you know, we have His work of creation, His work of redemption, and there are other things we would add into that is

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His providence, God is always at work behind the scenes. Then, I enjoy the study of the various names of God, that's a rich study.

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The third thing I enjoy studying about the person of God is His attributes, sometimes called

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His perfections. And so, I taught a series of lessons not long ago at Germantown Hills on the attributes of God, and so I've chosen to take one of those lessons today and to share that with you, and I promise not to preach during this session, well, at least

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I'll try not to preach during this session, but sometimes you get going and it's kind of hard not to preach instead of just teach, but we are going to try to just share some things with you today.

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And the word I want to share with you is the word immutability, the immutability of God.

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That would be His unchangeability, we can say it that way as well.

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So in this world in which we live, nothing is more certain to us than the fact that things change, but God never does,

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He is unchangeable. Some years ago while I was attending Moody Grad School in downtown

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Chicago, I decided to revisit the area of my childhood days.

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We were living in Colorado Springs at the time and I would fly into Chicago and then I would be there for a week of class.

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I usually would get an airline ticket that would bring me in on a weekend, either flying in on a weekend or flying out on a weekend, because it was cheaper that way.

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And so one of those weekends I decided that while I was in Chicago, I usually would go out to Wheaton and stay with Vicki's aunt and uncle, but this one particular time

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I decided that I wanted to touch base with relatives, family, hadn't seen many of them for a long time and they're all in the

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Morrison area. And so I decided that I would rent a car and I would drive to Morrison and Fenton and visit with family over the weekend, it was all arranged to take place.

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So I got off the plane and found my luggage and I made my way to the car rental station and I got there and they're all ready to hand me the keys to the car and they said, well, can we see your driver's license?

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I said, well, sure, no problem, I'll let you see my driver's license and I handed my driver's license to them and what they noticed about it was that it was expired.

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Uh -oh. Well, in Colorado you have 90 days either side of your birthday to get your license renewed and I shared that with them, they said, yeah, that's

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Colorado, but this is Illinois. And so they wouldn't let me rent the car, so I had to make an emergency call and arrange for my aunt and her husband to meet me at Rock Falls.

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I caught a bus and they took me to Rock Falls and they picked me up there and wherever they left me off, wherever, they stopped me off in Rock Falls someplace and they took me back to the area of Morrison and Fenton.

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Along the way, they decided to take me by every place of my childhood.

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They knew where those places were and so they took me by them. And there was one thing I noticed about every one of those places that we went by.

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Things had changed. Things had changed. Well, you know, that's the way it seems.

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It has been said that the more things change, the more things change. In other words, change is always taking place.

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So from one day to the next in this world in which you and I live, things are a little bit different than they were the day before.

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And it will be a little bit different tomorrow. The 5th century philosopher

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Heraclitus claimed that it was impossible to step into the same stream or river twice.

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Now think about this with me. Impossible to step into the same river twice.

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His point was that by the time you climbed out of the river, climbed up the bank, turned around, climbed back down the bank and got back into the river, that it was a different river.

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That the waters had already gone by that were there you had stepped into before and it was not the same river that you had stepped in just a few moments before.

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His point was that in life everything changes. Life is a continually flowing stream of constant change.

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Things change. When we affirm that God is unchanging, what we're saying is that he does not change.

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And we have a word for that. The word for that is the word immutability. It's one of the great doctrinal words.

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We think of God as being omniscient. He knows all things or he's omnipresent.

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He is present everywhere at all times or he's omnipotent. Nothing's impossible to him.

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Well, to go alongside of those particular three attributes is this matter of immutability.

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God does not change. We believe that the scriptures teach that God is unchanging or as theologians want to say immutable.

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Let me explain that word. The word immutable comes from two Latin words. The first word is mutare, from which we get our

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English word mutation, meaning change. It also attaches to it the little word im,

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I -M. When you attach that to it, the word means not.

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So you put im and mutare together and it simply means that which does not change, unchanging.

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You see in the book of Malachi in chapter 3 and verse 6,

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God simply says, I change not.

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And we say that God is immutable. And by that we say that God does not change. So I want to turn to the book of Psalms right now in Psalm 102.

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Psalm 102 here and just a few verses to share with you on this particular topic.

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At least it touches on this particular topic. Psalm 102 and I'm going to read verses 25 through 27.

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And it says, Now there are two particular truths taught there.

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One of them is the eternality of God. There is no ending to his years. There's no beginning to his years.

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He is eternal. But on the other hand, he says, I am the same. He does not change.

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So God is unchangeable. A doctrinal statement for that would be

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God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises.

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Yet God does act and God does feel emotion.

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And he acts and feels differently in different situations. The point of that is that God is not immobile.

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That God is active. And the reason God does not change is that he is perfect just the way he is.

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There is neither need nor the possibility of change when it comes to the person of God.

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Now, in his book, The Attributes of God, A .W. Pink writes this concerning God.

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He says, He cannot change for the better, for he is already perfect.

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And being perfect, he cannot change for the worse. Altogether, unaffected by anything outside himself, improvement or deterioration is impossible.

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He is perpetually the same. I don't know about you, but I like that.

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I like that concept, that idea that God is unchangeable. See, God cannot suffer loss.

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He cannot suffer decay. And nothing can be added to God and nothing can be subtracted from him.

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You see, he is incapable of being better.

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For how can you improve upon perfection? If it is perfection and he is perfection, his attributes are his perfections, you cannot improve upon them.

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God is unchangeable. Now, we also say that God is incorruptible.

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And therefore, he cannot and will not change. And I want us to look at a couple of verses here for a moment.

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I'm going to turn to the book of Romans in chapter 1 and verse 23. Now, I hope as you're following that outline that you're able to fill in the blanks.

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I'm going to try to remember to repeat everything that's in the blanks there for you.

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In chapter 1 of Romans, it says, in verse 23, it says,

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And changed the glory of the uncorruptible—see the word uncorruptible—God into an image, made like a corruptible man, and so forth.

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That's what man did when it rejected God. It changed the image of him into an image of an animal or some other type of thing.

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But God is uncorruptible. He does not change. And over in the book of 1

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Timothy in chapter 1, in verse 17, we touch on the same subject again.

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In verse 17, it says, And when we look at that word immortal and the word incorruptible, in the

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Greek language, they are the same word, aftartos. That is a word that means undecaying, and hence it means imperishable.

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You know, if my wife goes to the store and she buys a bunch of bananas, when she comes home, there's one thing she's sure to say to me.

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I got bananas today. You need to remember to eat some of them. Why would she say that?

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Because if you let those bananas sit there, what happens to them?

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Well, they get more ripe, and more ripe, and then they're more than ripe.

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You know, they're rotten. They change. They're corruptible. But when it comes to this matter of God, He is immortal.

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He is uncorruptible. He is imperishable. Another word that we could use.

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Not subject to decay. And thus He is ever the same, unchanging, and incorruptible.

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Thus God is immutable. Now, that's all introduction. That's all introduction to the lesson so far.

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When we come to Roman numeral number 1, and there we find—we're going to talk about the pictures of our unchangeable

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God. The Bible uses several pictures to portray the unchangeability or the immutability of God.

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Some of which explain what He is not like, and others which explain what

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He is like. Now, the portraits that Scripture paint of God are in stark contrast to the gods of the philosophers, the mythical gods of the heathen.

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Those gods of the philosophers and the gods of the heathen, you know one thing about them.

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They're constantly changing. And in fact, they're not even reliable.

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At one moment, they're agreeable. And in the next moment, they are disagreeable.

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At one moment, they promise one thing, but they turn around and they violate that promise.

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They don't keep that promise. They fail to keep that. That's what you'll notice about the gods, small g, of the heathen and of the philosophers.

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Well, for us, God is unchangeable.

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And on the one hand, God is unlike worn out clothes.

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Now, if you're like me, the more you wear a certain shirt, certain pants, wear certain socks, sooner or later, what happens to them?

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They wear out. They wear out. But God is unlike worn out clothes.

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Psalm 102, for that you might think, wow, where is that found in Scripture?

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Well, let's go to Psalm 102. Psalm 102, and you want to look at verses 25 through 27.

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It says, We've already read these verses.

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We're reading them again. Oh, the things in this world that seem to be most changing, most unchanging, that is the heavens and the earth.

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I mean, day after day, you rise from your bed, you rise from your sleep, and what do you discover?

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Well, number one, you discover the earth is still there. And number two, you discover that the sun is still there.

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Number three, you discover that the clouds are still there.

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And so they're always there. The sun is always in the sky. So regardless of how many rainy days you may have, that obscure the view of the sun, the sun is still there.

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And yet, the psalmist distinctly says, in these verses

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I just read, that the heavens and the earth shall someday perish.

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They will perish like that pair of socks that wears thin, and you have to throw them away.

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Things that must eventually be discarded for a new wardrobe. Those things wear thin.

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So God is unlike worn -out clothes. You see, God says at the very beginning of things, in the book of Exodus, he says,

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I am that I am. I exist.

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And there is no change to him whatsoever. So God is unlike worn -out clothes.

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Now, that's a strange figure, I know, but it's there. God says that about himself. Number two,

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B, God is much like an eternal rock. Let's go back to the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 32, and verses 3 and 4.

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Okay, Deuteronomy, chapter 32.

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Getting there, almost there. There I am. Chapter 32, and verses 3 and 4.

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Because I will publish the name of the Lord, ascribe you greatness unto our

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God. He is the rock. His work is perfect, for all his ways are judgment.

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A God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. It's interesting to note, as you read through Scripture, especially in the

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Old Testament, how often God is referred to in terms of a rock.

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A rock. There's a great number of passages, and we're going to just look at some of them here.

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We're going to go forward here to 2 Samuel, and chapter 22.

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2 Samuel 22. And we're going to look here, first of all, at verses 2 and 3.

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And this is David speaking here. And he said, God is like a rock.

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Steady. Stable. Unmovable. We go on.

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Verse 32. Same chapter. For who is God? Save the

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Lord. And who is a rock? Save our God. And then in verse 37, it says,

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Well, let me read it. It's not what I thought.

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I'm thinking I meant a different verse there. But let's go over to Psalm 18 now. Psalm 18.

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And we're going to see much the same thing that God is referred to as a rock.

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We'll say more about that here in just a bit. Psalm 18, verse 6.

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No, I'm sorry, not verse 6. Verse 2. My deliverer.

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Just as David has said in 2 Samuel, just as it was recorded there. My God, my strength in whom

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I will trust. My buckler and the horn of my salvation and my high tower. And what you're beginning to see here is that God as a rock, unchangeable, is a source of security.

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He is our security. Nothing changes with Him. He's our high tower where we go for protection, our security.

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We continually go to Him. And then we look again in verse 31 of the same chapter.

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Verse 31. It says, And then we go to verse 46.

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Verse 46, it says, There's even a chorus that goes with that.

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Do you remember that? I don't know if you know that chorus or not.

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I learned that as a kid, a long, long time ago. So God is our rock.

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He lives. And let the God of my salvation be exalted. I'm going to show you one more.

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First Corinthians. We're going to go to our New Testament here for a moment. And an interesting thing, what it says in the

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New Testament concerning Jesus Christ. It says in 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 4,

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And so what it says of the Father, it says of the Son as well. They're both referred to as the rock.

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Something that is, the figure is of something that is unchanging.

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At least to our appearance it seems to be unchanging. In the Hebrew of the Deuteronomy passage, the word rock also comes first in that passage.

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And in the Hebrew language as well as in the Greek, whenever a particular word comes first in a sentence, their sentence structure is so much different than ours.

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You have to learn how their structure gets together. But when a word is mentioned first in a sentence, that is the word that's getting the emphasis.

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That's the priority. That's the emphasis right there in that first word. So it's emphasizing the fact that He is a rock.

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It's giving it the place of great importance. So it speaks of an unchangeable refuge, is what the rock speaks of.

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Of the one who grants us a firm defense. The one who is a secure resort when we find ourselves in difficulty.

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And He is that, our defense. He is that secure resort by virtue of being unchangeable and being unconquerable.

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God is a rock. The idea is that He is something that is imperishable and unchangeable.

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He's not some kind of divine putty that is molded and shaped by circumstances in time.

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You know, there is nothing that surprises God. Nothing makes

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Him change. He is the same from the beginning into eternity.

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From eternity past and eternity future. He is the same. Now, Philip Ryken has likened the

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God of Heaven and Earth to a granite boulder. We pick up that picture in the

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Scriptures as well, don't we? And He's like a granite boulder in the middle of a stream, in the middle of rapids, but it's actually better.

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I used to like to go up into the mountains and go by a mountain stream.

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And you would come upon a place where you've been before, time after time after time, and out in the middle of that stream there's a boulder.

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And the water just goes over that boulder, around that boulder, and it never seems to change.

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It never changes. And that's the picture that we see here in this manner that God is a rock.

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So day after day, month after month, year after year, the granite boulder is unchanged by the swirling currents of water that flow around and over it.

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We know that eventually in time that the boulder will be eroded by the wind and by water and so forth over long periods of time.

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But to our appearance, the boulder is unchanged. So God is our rock, unchangeable.

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Our God's like that. So the swirling tide of change in our world does not affect our

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God as it affects us. Change comes and, wow, we can just be unnerved by that change.

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What do I do now? You may go to work tomorrow morning and you get a pink slip. Wow, circumstances just changed.

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Where's your financial security now? You've got a house payment to make. You've got utility bills to pay, but you've lost your job.

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And so those things change, and when those things change, they unnerve us. But God is never moved by anything that takes place.

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He is solid. He is sound. He is stable. He is unchangeable.

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He is ever constant. In Isaiah chapter 26,

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Isaiah 26, Isaiah tells us what we're to do with this fact, that God is unchangeable.

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In Isaiah 26 and verse 4, it says this,

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Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.

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Strength doesn't change. It is always the same. And so the prophet challenges us to trust in the

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Lord forever. And why? Because the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.

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And as it literally reads, he is the rock of ages.

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The passage of time doesn't make God older. It does for us.

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How often we wish we were maybe back in those younger years, I don't know. But, you know, year after year, year after year.

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I heard my wife's had a birthday recently, and my youngest son's had a birthday recently.

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They're one year older. And things have changed. But God is eternal.

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He's unchangeable. So the passage of time doesn't make God wiser.

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It doesn't make him older. It doesn't mean that he has more knowledge. Hopefully for us, as time goes by, that we are wiser, that we have gained more knowledge.

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But with God, he doesn't need to gain any more wisdom. He's perfect in wisdom. He doesn't need to gain any more knowledge.

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He is omniscient. He knows all things already. Time doesn't make

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God bigger. It doesn't make him smaller. It doesn't make him greater. It doesn't make him lesser. It doesn't make him stronger.

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It doesn't make him weaker. The very name, I Am, bears witness to the fact that God has always been, and that he always will be, and he will always be the same.

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He is as he has always been. Now, God didn't say of himself,

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I become. And neither did he say, I am becoming. But you see, he said,

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I am. Period. I exist. And he exists unchangeable.

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He's the eternal God who does not change, the one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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Well, that brings us to, then, the importance of God's unchangeableness. At first thought, that God is unchangeable might not seem to be of great importance to us, but it is.

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You see, if God is unchangeable, then any change in him, if it ever does happen, any change in him must be for the better or for the worse.

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If he has changed for the better, then that would mean that God was not as good as he could be before that.

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That he was not perfect. If he changes for the worse, then God would be changing from being good to being evil.

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So if God is changeable, then he is not perfect at any given point in his existence, which, of course, is eternal.

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Immutability assures us that none of God's perfections will ever become imperfections.

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You know, we all had the experience of buying a new car. We buy that car, and we go to the dealer.

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It's a brand new car. We go to the dealer, and they have put it through a process that everything is impeccable, is clean, is perfect, is beautiful.

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You know, it shines. And you get into that new car, and there's something about the smell of the new car smell, you know.

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And you're just proud to get this car. So you get in it, and you drive off the lot.

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And by the way, if you were to drive it back on the lot five minutes later, you wouldn't get as much for it as you paid for it.

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Remember? And what's the thought behind that? The car is getting older. And, you know,

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I remember one day with one of the Malibu.

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I like Malibus. And I had this little black Malibu. It was just shiny and bright.

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And I remember I was at my sister's house once, and I had a park over here next to a concrete wall.

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And as I backed out the driveway, I cranked the wheel. I turned the wheel. Guess what I did?

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Screech! Right down the side. I hit the concrete wall. And guess what?

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That beautiful car now had a flaw. And somehow it had lost its beauty.

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But God doesn't change. He is perfect in his beauty, in his wonder.

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So we need to look at a couple things here. Isaiah 46. Isaiah 46 in verses 10 and 11.

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In verse 10, it says, Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying,

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My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executed my counsel from a far country.

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Yea, I have spoken it. I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it.

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I will also do it. Have you ever made someone a promise? And then you fail to keep it?

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Now, you may fail to keep it for any number of reasons. Number one, we might have the tendency to promise more than we can deliver.

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You know, more than we're capable of delivering. Number two, there's this thing called memory.

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You ever forgotten an appointment? You ever forgotten the answer to that important test you took in the final?

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In your English final, you know? You forgot the answer to that? That's the way we are.

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And things change with us. And we might make a promise, but for one reason or another, we can often fail to keep that promise.

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But God keeps every promise that He made. God has purpose to redeem a people for His name and from amongst

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His lost creation. And those whom He redeems have a grand and glorious purpose in life.

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You know what that purpose in life is? 1 Corinthians 10 31 Whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.

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That's our grand and glorious purpose. And while we need to discover just what

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God's plan is for our lives, we know that whatever that may be, it is for His glory.

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And the world continues to search for purpose and significance, but the believer finds his purpose in God.

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And God is unchanging in His purpose. And B, God is unchanging in His plan.

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I'm going to go over to the book of Hebrews and just a couple of passages there that I want to look at and relate to this particular thought.

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Hebrews chapter 1 to begin with, and verse 2. Well, I'm going to read verses 1 and 2.

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God, who at sundry times and in diverse manner spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom

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He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds, or the ages.

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We go over to chapter 11 and verse 3. And there it says,

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Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

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God has laid out a plan for the ages in His word. And as we study His word, we begin to discover that plan.

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And His plan outlines a program for His people. Israel and God will make it to pass. Israel will be the primary,

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I think, the primary nation in the world in the millennial kingdom. His plan also outlines a program for His people, the church.

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And He will bring it to pass. So God is unchanging in His plan, in His purpose.

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And then God is unchanging in His promises. I think my time's almost up here, isn't it?

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It says 10 .16 back there. A few minutes?

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Two, three minutes? I'll take two, three minutes and I'll be done. Okay. In 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 12.

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Great verse. For the which cause I also suffer these things, nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom

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I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which

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I have committed unto Him against that day. He's able to keep His word, for one thing, because He's all -powerful.

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But more than that, He is the faithful God. He is the faithful God and He does not change.

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So God is unchanging in His promises. Now to my last page. The God is immutable does not mean that He's immobile or that He does not and cannot act because He does.

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The Creator of heaven and earth is not sitting idly by but He is not sitting on His hands.

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He is the Creator and the Sustainer of all things. Daily He upholds the heavens and the earth which

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He created by the word of His mouth. Psalm 33 verse 4. And God invades our world day by day to do

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His mighty deeds and to accomplish His sovereign purpose in us. He is, according to Colossians 1 .29,

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He is mightily at work in us. And remember back in Philippians 1 .6

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He says that the good work that He began in you, He will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

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He will complete it. So when we say that God is immutable, we mean that He never changes

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His mind. And when the Bible says that God repented, it's not as we think.

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When it says He repented, there is normally, quite invariably, a condition that is already attached.

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And God has already said, if you do this, this is what I do. If you do that, this is what I do. So God is unchangeable.

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There's more, I'm kind of going through that quickly here and there's more that could be said. But I want to give you this last thought from Thomas Watson.

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He said, God is the same in all His perfections, constant in His intentions, steady to His purpose, unchangeably fixed, and persevering in all